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Topic: Dough Doctors cracker...No fail! (Read 73138 times)

After almost fail in my last thread, I have made my best pie ever. I did tweak the doctors recipe a little. I added a teaspoon of garlic powder. The major change was doubling the amount of oil. I had made some matzo dough after watching a video, and it made great crackers. The matzo recipe called for almost as much oil as water. It was too light for pizza. So I decided to increase the oil in the Doctor's recipe. After mixing the dough, I still had a lot of dry flour, so spritzed the dry flour with water to moisten it, then formed the ball. The difference was amazing. It was light, airy, and very crackery. Even the areas that did not laminate were light and very crispy, not dense and hard. It is as close to the original Pizza Hut thin and crispy as I think get using a home oven. I used KABF. I have not tried KASL flour as of yet. Maybe using that would make it more flakey. All in all, I think I have gone as far as possible in making a great cracker crust at home. I tried this method twice since my Cracker Crust Fail, and both times I got the same results. So, I think this will be my final recipe for cracker crust pizza, I don't think I can improve it. I have attached pics to show the results. I think I cooked the pizza a little to long, the crust was very brown, but did not taste burnt.

This is after the par bake. I baked it in the cutter pan for two minutes. I removed it from the pan and placed the skin on the stone for three more minutes. I poked the bubbles after removing from the stone. I let the skin cool to room temp before topping.

I lowered the oven temp to 425 degrees.I brushed the skin with olive oil. Then add the toppings of mozz, mushrooms, Italian sausage, and diced tomatoes. I placed the skin on the stone and baked till the cheese started to lightly brown.

Very, thin and crispy. This is my best to date. The texture of the crust was delightful, and I can't wait to make another one. Thanks to everyone on the forum. I finally made the pizza of my dreams. Without this site, I would still be eating low grade pizzas. Now I can have my fave pizza if I can stand the 24 hour wait for the dough. I think this will be my last post on my cracker crust quest. I think my next thread will be Pizza Bianca.

Thanks BTB and Mad Ernie! When I first tried my hand at cracker crusts, I did not par bake them. The end result was more dense and chewy, with a little crakery texture. I also did not like gummy results under the toppings. After par baking the crust, they were more light and crackery and no gummy layer. I believe the more moisture you can drive out of the dough while cooking makes for a more tender and cracker like crust. That's why I have started letting the crust cool down to room temp after the par bake. The crust seems to get more crisper as it cools. When I used to par bake, I would pull the skin out of the oven and top it as fast as possible, and then back to the oven. The crust was still soft when it went back in as compared to being crisper if I gave it a chance to cool before topping. Also, lowering the oven temp to 425 after par baking gives the crust more time in the heat while the toppings cook. I think my biggest surprise was, doubling the amount of oil in the dough recipe. It got rid of the dense and chewy texture, and gave it a very flakey, tender, and cracker like result. It's hard to get commercial results with a home oven. I do have to go through more steps using this process, but I now can get the type of crust I am looking for. I almost believe I won't go out for cracker crust pizza again when I can make better at home. Plus I get the satisfaction of making a great pizza and sharing with good friends and family.

Thanks BTB and Mad Ernie! When I first tried my hand at cracker crusts, I did not par bake them. The end result was more dense and chewy, with a little crakery texture. I also did not like gummy results under the toppings. After par baking the crust, they were more light and crackery and no gummy layer. I believe the more moisture you can drive out of the dough while cooking makes for a more tender and cracker like crust. That's why I have started letting the crust cool down to room temp after the par bake. The crust seems to get more crisper as it cools. When I used to par bake, I would pull the skin out of the oven and top it as fast as possible, and then back to the oven. The crust was still soft when it went back in as compared to being crisper if I gave it a chance to cool before topping. Also, lowering the oven temp to 425 after par baking gives the crust more time in the heat while the toppings cook. I think my biggest surprise was, doubling the amount of oil in the dough recipe. It got rid of the dense and chewy texture, and gave it a very flakey, tender, and cracker like result. It's hard to get commercial results with a home oven. I do have to go through more steps using this process, but I now can get the type of crust I am looking for. I almost believe I won't go out for cracker crust pizza again when I can make better at home. Plus I get the satisfaction of making a great pizza and sharing with good friends and family.

Nick57,

That was an excellent post you just made....you have learned alot and it shows.

I really wish there was someway that we could all have a "tips and tricks" section for each of the different styles listed here on the forum....your's here would definetly be in it. But I guess it would be very hard to set this idea up unless we had only one person selecting the tips . Just a thought.....

Thanks Lawman. I was going for a thickness factor of .05, or about the thickness of a dime. I let the dough do it's thing for 24 hours in the fridge. The last pie I made, I let it warm up in a oven that was just warmer than room temp, about 80 or 90 degrees for about two hours. The warm dough rolled out very easily. I think I should have docked it a little more, it had larger bubbles than the last pie I made. I did punch them down after removing from the par bake. The main difference from my "Fail Cracker pie" was the doubling of the oil from 4 to 8, which turned out to be 2.26 tablespoons, and spritzing any dry flour with a little water before forming into a ball.. I tried more oil after making a matzo dough cracker pie as an experiment. The matzo uses almost as much oil as water. It made a great cracker but was too fragile to make a pizza with. After that I wanted to see what would happen if I tried it with a pizza crust. I just tried doubling the oil as a start. To my surprise it created a very crackery crust, and the dough was not tough or dense, it was light and airy. Just the way I remember Pizza Hut from the 60's.

I've included the dough calculation tool so you can see the amounts I used to make a 16' pizza skin. As you can see the thickness factor is .1. I do that for a reason. Sometimes the dough gets out of shape or cracked at the edges when rolled out. I roll the dough to the desired thickness, about a dime or so, then plop it in the cutter pan and trim. I have a lot of leftover dough. I would rather start with more dough so If I have a problem area with the skin, it is large enough that I can use the best part to place in the pan. As you can see it has the oil value at 4, which I changed to 8 for the last two Pies I made

I used olive oil in the dough, not extra virgin. I've read that Crisco makes a nicer tasting crust. I'm not sure the garlic powder adds any flavor, it is just an after thought. It does not show any salt value, but I usually add a teaspoon to the mix.

Nick... thanks for the dough calculation sheet. I made the dough last Tuesday and the pizza today. My dough had very little rise after 24 hours in the fridge. It did begin to rise during the two hour warm-up prior to rolling though but not as much as I expected. Using more oil did make this one of my better attempts but I still didn't get that light crispy crust you achieved but the pizza did turn out OK.

My crust was a thin solid piece, no separation, flakes or air pockets that you had. I did par-bake and let it cool a little before saucing and topping it. I also don't have a cutter pan or a stone instead I use a perforated pizza pan that has served me well for American Style crusts. I'm off to Amazon to find a dark anodized cutter pan. I'll give it another go next week.

The good thing about messing up is that you get to try again and make [EAT] more pizza! Thanks for documenting your process.

I use a cheap perforated Wal Mart cutter pan. My pan has gotten very dark over the years of use. It is a pretty thin pan, so maybe better heat transfer? Sorry to hear that you did not get bubbles. As you can see from my pic, I almost got too many bubbles. I am using KAFB flour. I heat the oven to 550 degrees, and let the stone warm up for an hour. I placed the very lightly docked pie in the pan on the stone for about three minutes. By the end of that time I already had a lot of bubbles. I removed the pie from the pan and placed on the stone for about two more minutes. I had very large bubbles when I pulled it from the oven. Maybe you aren't rolling thin enough, or the stone is not hot enough? I have made mine thicker in earlier attempts, and still got bubbles, but they were not as flakey or crispy. I always seem to get a pretty good amount of bubbles. I have gotten more crackery and flakey crusts as I keep learning the process. I don't get much of a rise from the dough, maybe a 30% increase at most in size of the dough ball. I have read on the forum that letting the dough get to room temp or a little above helps in rolling out the skin, and it does work. Keep me informed on your progress. I'm going to make a pie next week. I will use the same steps outlined in this thread. I'll post comments and pics on this thread. We'll see if I get a good crust again. Maybe I'll get a failure, it's all about learning. Who thought making a great pie would be so difficult. Rocket science, me thinks. I should have studied more chemistry in school! Just an after thought, I think using a stone will make a big difference. I started with out a stone, but found using it made a big difference in cracker crusts. The high heat of the stone creates steam in the dough, and that in turn creates the bubbles and lamination. Also the stone draws the moisture out of the skin, making it crisper.

For some reason I never got good results from doing my fermentation cold in the fridge. 18 hour room temperature gave me the rise and flavor i was looking for.

As far as pans go I've always liked the one with the holes in it. They make the same pan with no stick teflon coating but don't dare use the pizza cutter on that one. Plain flat pans without the holes seem to hold the moisture from escaping.

I have been thinking about getting one of those screen discs and seeing what that it is like. I just use my pan for the initial par bake of two or three minutes. I remove the skin and finish the par bake directly on the stone. I then add the toppings to the skin and finish it on the stone. I do the fridge thing because that is how Steve does it and it seems to work for me. I think on a cracker you don't want much of a rise, it would have more of a bread like texture, not cracker like. I think the long rise is more for flavor. I could be wrong though.

After Lawman said he did not get any bubbles or lamination, I thought would try this again and post my results. I used the same procedure and ingredients. I did modify one thing. I mixed the dough by hand. It was easier and quicker than using the KA mixer. This is the dough after I dumped it onto the counter. I used the rubber spatula to mix the dough.

As you can see it's quite a bit bigger than the pan. If you look at the dough calculator I use a thickness factor of .1, but shoot for .05 thickness. I do that in case I have a bad area of the skin, I can use the good area for the pan .